This practical and healthy home confronts the challenges of location, extreme weather, climate change, and the looming clean-water crisis with noteworthy simplicity.

Synopsis: This 2600-sq.-ft. house in Margate, N.J., is similar in many respects to the average American home being built today, and the methods used to construct it are within the reach of most builders. However, its tight envelope, careful siting, water-conservation methods, finish materials, mechanicals, and low vulnerability to damage from storms and coastal flooding make it anything but average.

According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, 2015 was the warmest year since 1880, the year when global temperatures began to be recorded. But climate change is fickle, and during the winter of 2015, many in the northeastern United States were muttering the new cliche, “So much for global warming!” Instead of experiencing the warm winter much of the western United States was having, the northeastern states were bundling up against the polar vortex, the extremely cold pocket of air that typically hovers above the Arctic but…

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